Jose Padilla, also known as Abdullah al Muhajir, who was arrested in an alleged plot to spread radioactive material across parts of America, is shown in this undated file photo. Padilla gave evasive... (Associated Press)

(Newser)
–
A lawyer for one of Jose Padilla's co-defendants accused prosecutors of turning the terror suspects' trial into a "US versus Islam" crusade to conceal a lack of evidence. Padilla, a US citizen, and two other men face charges of conspiring to murder and injure people in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe, as well as providing material support to Al-Queda.

Padilla was originally arrested for plotting to set off a dirty bomb, then held in a military jail for 3 1/2 years. But the charges in this civil case make no reference to a bomb plot, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, one defense lawyer charged that the government's case rests on clips of wiretapped conversations taken out of context and questionably translated from Arabic.